The new bestiary: animals in the chronicles of the war in Ukraine
At the beginning of April 2022, a few intriguing photos appeared on Twitter among the many images of the freed city of Bucha: press photographers huddled in the street next to a burnt-out tank, taking pictures of cats. It was no coincidence that the war correspondents were more interested in living cats than in the remains of a Russian tank. The war highlighted the importance of animals in Ukraine, making them prominent figures in the country’s public politics and war chronicles. In the early days of the war, reports of people fleeing the country, hiding from bombs in Kyiv metro stations with their pets, were poignant. Then we saw Ukrainian soldiers with their four-legged friends in their arms, hedgehog helpers, the heroic bomb-sniffing dog Patron, the zoo in Demydiv that weathered the occupation, the dogs and cats that survived in cities ravaged by the enemy, and a pig at the Lviv Animal Shelter. Animals in the chronicles of war are first and foremost companions in the struggle for freedom. They symbolise survival, resilience, hope, love and compassion for all living beings and solidarity among species towards a common goal. However, when considering the aesthetics of the photographs of Alexandr Gliadelov, Yasuyoshi Chiba and other professionals, the images of animals also acquire unforeseen powers of agency. When faced with the madness of sapiens, we tend to seek reassurance in them.
Akvilė Grigoravičiūtė graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science in 2009 and acquired a Master’s degree in German Studies from the Paris-Sorbonne University in 2010. She is a researcher and translator of Yiddish literature and is currently working as a programmer at an IT start-up in Paris. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she has been actively involved in the information war against Russia.
Dr. Erika Grigoravičienė is an art historian and critic, curator of exhibitions, senior researcher at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, and author of the books The Visual Turn ("Vaizdinis posūkis", 2011), and Is This Art, or the Captivity of a Painting (“Ar tai menas, arba Paveikslo nelaisvė”, 2017).
